NZ Skeptics Articles

Bad medicine: The fraudster doctors of New Zealand

Bronwyn Rideout - 24 October 2023

In my newsletter article last week, one of the dates referred to the 2018 trial of Zholia Alemi, a former Auckland University medical student who was able to practise psychiatry across the NHS and evade discovery for two decades before being undone by her own greed. I was reminded about two other, peculiar cases of fraudster doctors in NZ and thought that it would make a good article and segment in the most recent episode of the Yeah…Nah podcast.

I’ll start with the first case, as it is likely the most familiar.

First is Yuvaraj Krishnan, who was sentenced to three years and seven months in jail in April of 2023. He posed as a respiratory fellow at Middlemore Hospital for 6 months at the height of the pandemic and saw 81 patients, conducting chest exams and prescribing medicines, when another doctor expressed their concerns.

Source | Yuvaraj Krishnan in Manukau District Court, April 2023

Krishnan had used a fake CV, reference letters, and a forged practising certificate to land the position.

But this wasn’t Krishnan’s only attempt at fraud. In 2012, he pretended to be a med student at the University of Auckland and attended classes for two years before he was discovered and trespassed in 2012. Prior to that, he had actually attended Auckland University as a biomedical science student for one year but wasn’t selected for their aforementioned med school. He was able to evade discovery by possessing a fake student id card and not putting his name to anything. This worked for two years until his lab partner put his name on an assignment against his instruction; when Krishnan’s name couldn’t be matched to any class lists, his deception did make headlines.

He then went to Australia and completed a Bachelor of Science in Anatomy and Histology. According to the Otago Daily Times, Krishnan also fraudulently claimed to have received a Masters in Science from Sydney University before returning to New Zealand. Krishnan worked in the immigration division of MBIE (Ministry of Business, Innovation, and Employment) between 2015-2016.

Then he attended a four-year med school at Jagiellonian University in Poland before leaving in his third year. Despite not completing his degree, he would claim that he had received his medical degree.

But when Krishan applied to work as a COVID tracer at Auckland District Health Board in 2020, he claimed that he worked at MBIE as a “health officer”. Krishnan stayed in the COVID tracer role at Greenlane Medical Centre until February 2022, when he began work at Middlemore. He would also use his time at Greenlane as a front to claim that he had worked as a medical officer for ADHB.

During his employment as a COVID tracer in 2021, Krishnan pled guilty to careless driving and failing to stop in a hit and run crash. However, he appealed to the high court on the grounds that he was concerned that the conviction would impact his medical career in NZ and ability to train in the US. Krishnan won his appeal for discharge without conviction, having submitted affidavits stating that he was a registered doctor and forged letters of support from the Medical Council of NZ and from a clinic manager named James Worthy at ADHB. Both the council and ADHB deny ever writing such letters and furthermore, there is no record of a James Worthy ever working for ADHB.

Krishnan was interviewed by Middlemore in December 2021 and was hired in February 2022 on the condition that he provide his annual practising certificate. He forged 2 copies, one being a subpar forgery and another that was an alteration of a colleague’s and submitted those. At the same time he applied at Middlemore, he tried to get a job with an institute based at Wellington Hospital with the same CV but was rejected because his work and education felt off. Colleagues at Middlemore quickly caught on that Krishnan’s work was not up to par and the whole scam was finally undone when a former classmate recognised his name on referral documents and raised the alarm.

Krishnan was stood down from his position at Middlemore in August in 2021 and immediately tried to get a role as a dermatologist with NZ Skin Health. The news broke just as someone there was conducting reference checks. By accounts from the time, it was reported that Krishnan had interviewed well but was using YouTube and Google to teach him the basics of dermatology. It’s possible that family pressure or jealousy could be motivating factors here (Krishnan’s two brothers attended Ivy League universities). The presiding judge likely stated it best when describing Krishnan as having a distorted sense of self-entitlement

In a real turn of events, Krishnan appealed his conviction only to find it going in front of the same High Court judge he deceived.

Looking back at articles still available from 2012-2014, Krishnan’s identity remained anonymous nor was the matter reported to police. Krishnan’s deception was significant even then, including the forgery of an identification badge. While Krishnan was not known to have had access to patients at the time, there was a bit of hand wringing about access to cadavers. Given how Krishnan’s behaviour escalated over the decade, it would be interesting to see if Auckland University behaves so leniently next time..

Krishnan isn’t the only person to drag the University of Auckland Medical School into a scandal.

Source | Zholia Alemi

Zholia Alemi was born in Iran in 1962. She arrived in New Zealand in 1986 and received permanent residency in 1988. In her application, she claimed to have completed multiple terms at nursing school between 1981-1986. She did study at the University of Auckland and did receive a Bachelors in Human Biology in 1992. She was enrolled in the medical degree but seems to have struggled, passing the first year exams after two tries and was dismissed after failing her second year exams.

In 1995, she relocated to the UK and registered with the General Medical Council as a doctor using a forged degree and letter of verification from the University of Auckland.

Source | (Left) Alemi’s original degree; (Centre and Right) Alemi’s forgeries that were sent to the General Medical Council.

I wouldn’t be telling this story if someone had done a reference check so suffice to say she was granted provisional registration, worked in hospitals in Ireland, and received full registration in 1997. Alemi would then spend 20 years working as a locum psychiatrist for the NHS.

She became a member of the Royal College of Psychiatrists in 2003, requiring 4 attempts to pass part one of their exams and three tries to pass part two. In 2021, the college even recommended her for entry into a specialist register in psychiatry with learning disability, giving her access to Consultant positions. But, by 2017, 23 complaints had been made about her unprofessional behaviour and she was subject to a 12 month suspension from the register and a further 12 months after that.

It all came tumbling down for Alemi in 2018 when she forged the will of a wealthy widow in Cumbria, making Alemi and Alemi’s grandchildren benefactors of the widow’s estate. She was sentenced to 5 years in prison and even then, no one had checked her credentials.

Only then did a local journalist think to contact the University of Auckland, only to find out Alemi was never a qualified Doctor. It appears Alemi avoided detection because until 2003 doctors from Commonwealth countries could bypass foreign doctor requirements needed to practise in the UK.

This led Alemi being charged with a whole new set of offences relating to fraud. She was found guilty of 13 counts of fraud, three counts of obtaining pecuniary advantage by deception, two counts of forgery, and two counts of using a false instrument on February 15th and on February 23rd, she was sentenced to 7 years in prison.

To put some things in perspective, during her time with the NHS, 24 of alemi’s patients were detained or sectioned during the 18 months that she worked with one UK health board. It is also alleged that Alemi prescribed Electro Convulsive Treatment and potentially sat on mental health tribunals.

The final case of the hour, is much older, far twistier, and was slightly salacious for its time, particularly with the speculation around whether the fraudster was a transvestite or transsexual, as was the language of the time..

In the immediate aftermath of Krishanan’s arrest, RNZ interviewed Robyn Beyer. Beyer was the general manager of health and addictions at the Nelson CHE in the 1990s and lamented how nothing had been learned from the case of Linda Astor.

Source | Linda Astor aka Linda Hoffmann

Astor began work in Nelson on January 6, 1998 as the clinical head of psychiatry and arrived with glowing references from Hutt Valley DHB; Astor had worked there briefly from March to December 1996. There was a glowing reference from a Polish professor of Psychiatry, Zbigniew Poddubiuk. Astor cut an attractive and confident figure that made her the favourite of some co-workers and the target of ridicule from others. However, the Nelson district would be left in the dark about Astor being subject to an investigation regarding communication and documentation of cases while in the Hutt.

Unlike Alemi and Krishnan, Polish-born Astor did train and graduate from medical school in Lublin, Poland in 1972 and followed that with a PhD in Neuropsychophamacology in 1975. She trained first as an Internist and later specialised in infectious diseases. Under their dead name of… Zbigniew Poddubiuk. Former colleagues of Astor’s during this particular period remember them as “…a homosexual, a kleptomaniac, and a fetishist…”. Astor is accused of forging a second degree indicating a specialisation in Psychiatry, dated 1978, the same year Astor was fired from Lublin Academy when she failed to return from vacation in the United States. Astor would not return to the school until 1995 when she registered her diplomas under the name Linda Astor post-gender affirmation surgery.

In her CV, Astor claimed to have worked for 15 years as the head of psychiatric services in the US and directly supervised 80 psychiatrists in Maryland and on behalf of the Bergman-Grollman Medical Associates clinic in Florida. Astor wasn’t long into her new role when alarm bells started ringing for Beyer, who started looking into Astor’s background. None of Astor’s references checked out, but Beyer could not get her superiors to take her seriously but was instead accused of jealousy. Beyer did her best to keep Astor away from patients by redirecting Astor’s attention to strategic tasks instead of clinical ones. Another staffer, consultant psychiatrist Al Fineman, who was also American, was unable to verify Astor’s claims about her work in the US especially with the non-existent Bergman-Grollman clinic or any other institutions Astor included in her CV.

While Astor was briefly suspended during the District’s investigation of Fineman’s evidence, Astor somehow convinced the top brass that her CV was correct and she had worked in private practice under the supervision of a registered psychiatrist, as she had never officially registered as a psychiatrist. The suspension was lifted after only a few days and doubters were chastised for questioning Astor’s appointment.

Astor’s “silly mistake” was leaving a loan application by the office copier, which revealed that her husband wasn’t an international lawyer but a Wellington used-car salesman. Furthermore, his name was listed as a referee. It seems that another investigation was underway and Astor was placed on suspension when she made her getaway, unwittingly funded by her employer via a DHB funded trip to France for a psychiatry conference, from which Astor never returned.

That same month, April 1997, Leslie Parr decapitated his girlfriend in her Naenae home. Parr has been under Astor’s care during her tenure at Hutt Valley DHB but a year prior to the murder, Astor has discharged him from his court ordered, compulsory treatment without even meeting him.

In the aftermath, several interesting and embarrassing facts were revealed about Astor and her employment:

The next time Astor was sighted was December 10, 2001, when Astor was arrested by immigration officials after being caught shoplifting. At the time, she had been working at a substance abuse hospital and a separate adolescent welfare agency, in two different states. She was on police files as “wanted for interview” for the supply of false information and documentation. Astor avoided extradition to NZ but was deported to Poland.

In 2004, NZ television crews found Astor employed as a senior psychiatrist working under the name of Linda Hoffman. According to the hospital Astor was working at, all of Astor’s certificates passed muster and were confirmed by the District Medical Chamber but Astor’s updated CV had a new set of quirks including the Hutt Valley Catholic Mission in Indonesia and the Psychogeriatric Department of Beech Hill Hospital in New Hampshire. It appears Astor did work in Beech Hill in 2001 as a person who refers new patients to the appropriate department, not as a specialist. The reference Linda provided for the Hutt Valley Catholic Mission was another fabrication; the writer was listed as Father Michael O’Hara, who shares the name of a main character of a 1940s film.

Source | One of Astor’s booking photos

Immediately after the television crews found Astor, she and her partner/husband Richard bolted again, leaving everything behind (although no animals this time around). It was soon revealed by police that Astor was the same woman they arrested in 2000 in Warsaw for extortion and robbery of a furniture store. The woman was released on the condition that she report regularly to the nearest police station.

Which obviously never happened.

Astor was arrested in 2005 and in 2006 was issued a two-year prison sentence, suspended for five-years, for financial crimes and using false documents. The District Medical Council also deregistered Astor but that didn’t stick; Astor appealed the sentence and due to convincing the Supreme Medical Court of her deep remorse, was only suspended from practice for four years.

Astor is said to have worked at various public institutions over the years with complaints about her behaviour and absurd advice following her wherever she went. In 2015, Astor was tracked down to a radiology clinic in Warsaw, where she was allegedly posing as a specialist gastroenterologist and later ran an outpatient clinic, garnering a history of significant complaints and patients dying due to malpractice. Astor laid low until 2017 when she was caught for the misuse of prescription documents from a former employer. She was able to flee persecution yet again until 2019 when Doctor Linda’s reputation as a subpar doctor may have finally caught up with her.

While the single fix for each of these cases seems to be the initiation of more stringent reference checking, even the contemporary case of Krishnan shows that checks and balances such as registers and modern innovations like email are not the failsafe we think they are in preventing bad actors from entering our health system. Each of the fraudsters had some degree of medical knowledge and ironically it was Alemi who was able to go the furthest and had the least time spent in medical school out of the three. While Krishnan was luckily caught in time, Alemi and Astor seem to have evaded justice and deregistration for so long because of the desperate situation healthcare systems are in globally. Astor in particular was known for working in hard to staff areas while Alemi worked as a locum; a position that can be exploited by the craftier manipulators amongst us.